The web site said the lead time for the TAM S1 Pro is 8 weeks. It's been 3 months and 11 days since I ordered. Considering they've had my money for months, there really should be some sort of estimated ship date on the orders page to keep customers updated on what is happening. I'm strongly considering cancelling my order and buying one of the many printers which ship immediately. I had my Ultimaker 2 within 3 days of ordering it from MakerShed.

Does anyone know what's going on?

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Bill Dempsey3-D printing enthusiast, maker, designer, and general tech geek.Currently own a Type A Machines Series 1 Pro and Ultimaker 2.Donated my Ultimaker original and CubeX Trio to my local maker space.

Anybody who needs an order update can email orders@typeamachines.com and get an update from our shipping team pertaining to the status of their order.

Our lead times are much higher than we see as acceptable, and I'm very sorry that this is the case. We are still chugging along though, and I did see over a dozen machines come off the assembly line this morning.

We're working as fast as we can to reduce our backlog. We have many customers who are loyal to us, and that it because we are loyal to our customers. We hope to earn your loyalty too, and we truly appreciate your patience. Once you have your machine, you're going to love it.

Every company I've purchased a printer from has had many customers who were loyal to them. That really has no bearing on whether my own experience has been good. So far, TAM seems to have nice people working for them, but the company's business practices are ludicrous.

First, TAM should really remove all of the false statements in the store which still claim that the lead time on the Pro is 8 weeks. (Since the lead time is currently at least 4 months...) Even worse, places like MatterHackers are advertising they have the same printer with a 6 week lead time because of their buying power. Second, it's not a normal business practice to charge a customer months before the ordered item ships. Further, if your company is going to arbitrarily double (or triple - who knows?) the shipping delay on an item, tell the customer. "Anybody who needs an order update can email orders@typeamachines.com" isn't good customer service. We shouldn't need to contact "orders@TAM" after the original ship date passes in order to find out what happened to our multi-thousand dollar order that never showed up. Any decent company automatically notifies the customer beforehand when an order is going to be delayed. It's common courtesy.

It has been so long since I paid for the printer that my bank changed providers from Mastercard to Visa, so I can't even ask for a credit back to the original account I used to buy the printer. I'm also not sure a credit could be made to the new Visa account, since I always keep it at zero balance to avoid paying interest. I have emailed "orders@TAM" again to discuss my options. I don't envy Stefani handling the customers with long-delayed orders.

As a side issue, I'm also wondering why the specified maximum temperature rating on the hot end seems to have been lowered since I originally placed my order. I was counting on having high maximum temperatures from the all metal hotend in order to print with a variety of nylons.

Time is money, and right now it feels like I've wasted a lot of both. At this point, this printer would need to arrive by the end of the week with a couple free rolls of Taulman Alloy 910 filament, just to overcome the feeling that I've been "played," much less earn my brand loyalty. Hopefully my posts here will serve as fair warning to anyone who really needs their printer shipped in a timely fashion. As of mid-January 2016, the delays are huge. Be warned.

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Bill Dempsey3-D printing enthusiast, maker, designer, and general tech geek.Currently own a Type A Machines Series 1 Pro and Ultimaker 2.Donated my Ultimaker original and CubeX Trio to my local maker space.

Where did you see the hot end spec go down? There might have been a typo. You should be able to print Alloy 910 and the other Nylon materials with no problem (other than the one involving keeping the moisture out of the material prior to printing).

(I'm not dodging the other portion of your post, a more formal response to that is coming soon. Thank you for taking the time to write that.)

Tom Davies contacted me earlier today to explain that the latest delay stems from an issue with a batch of bad rails that were rusting. It's nice to finally hear an explanation of what is going on there. Unfortunately, he still didn't give me any sense of when I could actually expect my printer to arrive, which is what I really wanted to know.

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Bill Dempsey3-D printing enthusiast, maker, designer, and general tech geek.Currently own a Type A Machines Series 1 Pro and Ultimaker 2.Donated my Ultimaker original and CubeX Trio to my local maker space.

Tom contacted me again today with specific information about where I am in the queue and what the production situation is like right now. Thank you to Tom. I feel much better knowing what is happening.

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Bill Dempsey3-D printing enthusiast, maker, designer, and general tech geek.Currently own a Type A Machines Series 1 Pro and Ultimaker 2.Donated my Ultimaker original and CubeX Trio to my local maker space.

Finally received my Type A Series 1 Pro yesterday, on February 16th, 2016. It was ordered and paid for on October 3, 2015. The total wait time was 4 months, 13 days from order to delivery. The entire time, the web site continued to state a lead time of 8 weeks. I just wanted to post the actual time mine took to arrive as a guideline for others who might be ordering a Pro based on that 8 week estimate. They may get it down to 8 weeks at some point, but it's not there now. Plan accordingly.

Regarding the printer. So far, so good. Unpacked, set up, leveled print bed, and printed my first part within 45 minutes from opening the box. I even took it slow, being sure to follow the directions precisely. When I leveled the print bed, I used a 0.08 mm feeler gauge to set the gap between the bed and the print nozzle at all 4 corners. This is a method I learned using my other three printers over the years. The test cone came out perfect. Overall, I'm impressed with the out of box experience. Nice job Type A.

The printer was packed very well. There were no dings, scratches, or blemishes. It looks perfect. One note, when attaching the top decorative panel on the left side of the machine, use the bolt which is holding the camera in place for the front end. You don't need a spacer for that spot. The camera mount acts as the spacer. The included instructions were for the 2014 Series 1, which has no camera. Overall, the minor assembly was pretty obvious and easy.

I'm looking forward to turning out a batch of gears in Alloy 910 over the next couple of days. So far, the print quality is on a par with what I've come to expect from my other printers after tweaking them. Turns out this machine might actually be worth the wait.

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Bill Dempsey3-D printing enthusiast, maker, designer, and general tech geek.Currently own a Type A Machines Series 1 Pro and Ultimaker 2.Donated my Ultimaker original and CubeX Trio to my local maker space.

I too am going into my 4th month waiting on a Series 1 Pro order. To date, no clue as to what is going on, dealer pointing finger at TAM and telling me to cancel the order and buy something else. And I've been inquiring since February and never once heard anything saying that the dealer had been in contact with TAM.

Seems to be very deceptive advertising on the part of the dealer and TAM to keep the 1-2 months delivery time information up when they know it is twice that. They sure were quick to post the recent price increase, but the delivery time estimate is unchanged.

Sure is the wrong way to go about giving your customers a good impression of the product by failing to meet their expectations on delivery time. When I see "1-2 months", I read that as don't expect anything before one month but no more than 2 months. TAM needs to be more proactive with their dealers and provide realistic delivery time estimates and if there is an issue, communicate that information so that it can be passed onto customers. Keeping everyone in the dark for months on end is no way to run a business.